By Rabbi Yehoshua Berman
“It’s just not going!” Sometimes, that’s how we feel, isn’t it? Whether it’s the davening, the learning, being a kind husband and father. You fill in the blank. We try. Oh, how we try. And sometimes (maybe even oftentimes?) it just feels like we’re up against a brick wall. And then the worry can start to creep in. What’s going to be?! What’s going to be with teshuva? With my gezeirah for the new year? With…
Pause for a Disclaimer: The following musings are not for everyone. If you read the above paragraph and found yourself wondering, “What is this guy talking about?!”, consider yourself lucky (very lucky, actually) and don’t bother reading the rest (unless you’d like to learn how to give chizuk). If, on the other hand, you were inwardly nodding affirmatively, then read on.
Considering the fact that the geulah will only come, the pasuk tells us, when we do teshuva with all our hearts, the above-described experiences can be awfully disheartening.
“And it will come to pass when all these things come upon you…and you will return to Hashem…with all your heart and all your soul. And Hashem…will bring you back from captivity…and gather you in from all the nations…[back] to the land which your ancestors inherited.”
We might find ourselves wondering incredulously (if perhaps only in those dark, dusty corners of our psyche that we prefer to ignore and pile lots of stuff on top of them), “Heart? What heart?! You mean the one that’s supposed to feel something when I’m davening? The one in which I’m supposed to conjure up deep feelings of remorse for wrongs done and immutable conviction for being better in the future? Well, then, I guess I must be suffering from spiritual heart failure because that just doesn’t seem to work for me.”
Yes, this can be a tough course to run. It’s no wonder, then, that so many of us seem to exhale a collective sigh of relief when that final tekiah is blown at the close of neilah. “Ok,” we might be inclined to think to ourselves, “it’s over. Now I’ve got a whole year until I have to go through that again.” Actually, it’s eleven months minus ten days, because as soon as Rosh Chodesh Elul rolls around, Yamim Noraim is back in the air.
Now, if you’re one of those people that I warned to not bother reading this if you can’t at all relate to the first few lines and think that I must be grossly exaggerating, allow me to share a brief vignette. I was once sitting and schmoozing with a few bachurim during summer bein ha’zmanim a number of years ago, and at one point I off-handedly mentioned that it’s incredible how in such a short time it’s going to be Elul already. “Don’t talk to me about Elul!”, one of the bachurim snapped as if I had just inflicted him with a snake bite, “I don’t even want to think about Elul!” Woah! I definitely was not expecting that!
Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. “Yeah, ok, you were schmoozing with some bummy bachurim.” But, actually, no. I was actually schmoozing with some of the best bachurim yeshiva-tuition can buy. Seriously, I am not exaggerating. In fact, that particular bachur – for whom the mention of Elul during summer bein ha’zmanim seemed to hit a raw nerve like a hornet sting – was such a tremendous masmid, lamdan, yerei Shamayim, and baal middos tovos that he wound up marrying into one of the prestigious families of one of the most prestigious yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael. Again, I am not exaggerating.
So, is this what it’s supposed to be about? I mean, I know that they’re called Yamim Noraim, but somehow it seems hard to believe that Hashem’s intention is that we are supposed to dread these days coming and inwardly long and yearn for when they’ll be over. In fact, Rabbeinu Yonah says that one of the three reasons for the mitzvah to eat on Erev Yom Kippur is to show how excited we are that the day on which we will get atonement for all of our sins has finally arrived, the day that we’ve been longing for the whole year!
Something has to shift. No?
And the truth is that a closer look at the pesukim quoted above provide the solution. But, first, if you don’t mind, I’d like to share a story that I heard from Rav Fishel Schachter. Many generations ago, in the sunrise days of the Chassidus movement, one of the future, great Chassidisheh Rebbehs (sorry, I don’t recall the names) married the daughter of the then-current Rebbeh of that area (and many areas beyond). It was Erev Rosh HaShana, and the illustrious chassan was davening by his even more illustrious father-in-law. For some reason, Mincha was just not a go. No matter how hard the new son-in-law tried, he simply did not manage to muster up any real kavanah and just kind of fumbled his way through. He felt totally dejected that his last teffilah of the year was such a flop. But by Maariv he hit the jackpot. The closeness to Hashem that he experienced during that first teffilah of the new year was off the charts. His soul was soaring, and he felt so incredibly uplifted and fulfilled upon the conclusion of the davening.
When all the congregants had exchanged shana-tovah greetings with the Rebbeh and the shul was empty save for the Rebbeh and his new son-in-law, the former turned to the latter and said, “You should know that a terrible, terrible decree was hanging in the balance and your davening completely annulled it.” “Yes,” the son-in-law responded, not at all surprised that his father in law was aware of the goings-on both in the Heavenly realms as well as in people’s personal lives here on Earth, “the Maariv was really something special.” “Your Maariv?!,” the Rebbeh responded incredulously, “I wasn’t talking about your Maariv. I was talking about your Mincha!”
That’s the story.
Now let’s take a closer look at the pesukim, or, to be more precise, the continuation of the pesukim. By the way, the pesukim we’re talking about are in Parshas Nitzavim 30:1-6.
“…And [Hashem] will gather you in from all the nations…and bring you back…to the land that your ancestors inherited…and Hashem…will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants to love Hashem…with all your hearts and all your soul, in order that you should live.”
The pesukim are telling us that after Hashem redeems us from galus, He will circumcise our hearts so that we will finally be able to love Him with a full heart. But, wait a minute! Just three pesukim prior, it says that we’re only going to merit experiencing the geulah if we return to Hashem with all our hearts and all our soul! So, if we’ve already achieved that state of following everything that Hashem instructs us with all our hearts, what is it supposed to mean when it says that only after the ingathering of the exiles will Hashem circumcise our hearts and we’ll be able to love Him with all our heart?
The answer to this question, I believe, is nothing more than an error in assumption. A simple mistranslation. Now, this is about to get a bit technical, but hang in there for a minute, and you’ll see where I am going with this.
When the pasuk says that we will only merit to be redeemed if we do teshuva and go back to serving Hashem “b’chol levavcha”, we assumed that it means “with all your heart”. An understandable assumption. But the fact of the matter is that the word kol (or chol) can mean one of two things. It can mean “all”, but it can also mean “any”.  In fact, there is an example of this in the very same parsha of Nitzavim whose pesukim we are trying to decipher.
“Sulfur and salt, it’s entire land will be scorched, it will not be sown nor shall it sprout, and not any type of greenery will arise in it, like the overturning of Sodom and Amorah… (29:22)”.
The word kol/chol appears twice in that pasuk, “chol artzah” and “kol eisev”. In the former phrase, the word is being used in the sense of “all”. The entire land will be scorched. However, in the latter phrase, the word is being used in the sense of “any”. It is obviously not saying that “all of the greenery will not arise in the land”, for that would imply that only “all” of the greenery will not grow, but some will. Clearly, that is not the meaning in this context. Rather, the meaning is that no greenery will grow in the land. Or, more literally put, not any type of greenery will grow. There are many other examples in the Torah of the kol/chol being used in the sense of “any” as opposed to “all” (see for example Breishis 4:14-15, Vayeitzei 30:32-33, and Vayeishev 39:23).
Sounds awfully technical, right? It is, but it can make all the difference in the world.
You see, if the pesukim are telling us that we are in a need of a heart circumcision – that we currently have a blockage sitting on our hearts that is in need of removal, and we therefore will not be able to love Hashem with a full heart until after we are redeemed – then it would seem that it is not possible to understand the previous “b’chol levavcha” of doing teshuva to mean “with all your heart”, but it must mean “with any heart”. In other words, Hashem is essentially telling us, “Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that you often feel that you have a heart of stone that can barely feel a thing. Yes, I know – far better than you – how hard it can be for you to feel inspired, how hard it can be to conjure up feelings of remorse for wrongs done or conviction for bettering your future. And that’s ok. If that’s the heart that you have, then all I ask is that you give me that. Do teshuva b’chol levavcha, with any heart that you happen to have. Whatever heart you have, that’s what I want you to give me. Just do your best and I will take care of all the rest.”
As the great Rebbeh said to his son in law, “It wasn’t the Maariv that I was talking about, it was the Mincha!” Yes, that Mincha that felt like such a flop. Such a failure. Such an immovable brick wall. Yes, that Mincha! And you know why? Because it’s easy to serve Hashem when we feel that whoosh of inspiration. When we are lucky enough to experience that ecstatic feeling of closeness to our Creator, it’s no big deal to put forth our energies into teffilah (or whatever other avodah we’re involved in at the moment – and make no mistake, just about every single aspect of our lives entails avodas Hashem as I wrote elsewhere). But to push through a rough davening when we’re tired, distracted, feeling down, or just plain dull or numb – now that’s a real avodah! And it’s that type of an avodah – where we do teshuva and serve Hashem b’chol levavcha, without whatever heart it is that we happen to have despite the immense difficulty in doing so – that has the power to annul terrible gezeiros and bring us the geulah.
{Matzav.com}